On Maharashtra tour, why Amit Shah inaugurated former Congress CM Vasantrao Naik's statue

The Print

26-05-2025

Across states, the BJP is known for co-opting late senior Congress leaders, attempting to get a foothold on their legacy. There are also various political calculations behind the BJP leader inaugurating a senior Congressman's statue, which a Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (undivided NCP) government commissioned 17 years ago when those two parties sat at the helm of Maharashtra.
Among them, what stood out Monday was his inauguration of a statue of ex-chief minister Vasantrao Naik at Nanded, Marathwada. Later, in a speech at a Nanded rally, Amit Shah again mentioned the Congress leader among political and historical personages, such as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
Mumbai: The 2025 Maharashtra local body poll resembles a mini assembly election this time, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah Monday kicking off the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) campaign in the state. He is on a two-day visit, with several programmes that he will attend in the offing.
Analysts say Naik was born in the politically significant Banjara community, and the Naik dynasty has had a huge following among community members. Vidarbha, a BJP stronghold, has given only four CMs to Maharashtra, and Naik was one of them.
The current generation of the Naik political dynasty is in the Mahayuti, including the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Analysts say the Congress has, so far, not celebrated Naik's legacy as much as the legacies of some of its other CMs in the state.
'In the Congress, the western Maharashtra and Marathwada leaders always gained prominence. The party has not talked about the legacies of Vasantrao Naik or Sudhakarrao Naik as much as it has about Shankarrao Chavan or Y.B. Chavan. The BJP knows this and is taking a step towards trying to own the leader's legacy,' political commentator Abhay Deshpande told ThePrint.
The Vasantrao Naik legacy
Vasantrao Naik was the first of only two CMs to be able to complete a full five-year term in the state from 1967 to 1972. From 2014 to 2019, the second CM to complete a five-year term was the BJP's Devendra Fadnavis.
Known for steering the 'green revolution' in Maharashtra, Naik remained Maharashtra CM for a total of 11 years from December 1963 to February 1975, when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi replaced him with Shankarrao Chavan, widely believed to be one of her trusted loyalists.
The Naik family dynasty is from Pusad in the Yavatmal district in the Vidarbha region.
Amit Shah inaugurated the statue on Tuesday in Nanded at the Vasantrao Naik Chowk.
The Naik family is the only one to have produced two Maharashtra CMs—Naik himself and his nephew Sudhakarrao Naik, the CM from June 1991 to February 1993.
Yet the two are the least talked about uncle-nephew pair in Maharashtra's political history, overshadowed by the pairings of Bal Thackeray and Raj Thackeray or Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar.
Vasantrao Naik's grandsons, who are in active politics now, are Indranil Naik, a minister of state in the Fadnavis-led Mahayuti government and MLA from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP. The other grandson, Nilay Naik, is a former MLC from the BJP.
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Banjara community outreach
The Banjara community is nearly a crore in population and spread across Maharashtra. The community is also present in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, etc. Their total population is roughly 15 crore across India.
The BJP and the Sangh Parivar have, across the country, been focusing on their Banjara community outreach.
Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated an expansive museum dedicated to the community, Banjara Virasat Museum, in Pohradevi in Washim district, Maharashtra.
In Maharashtra, the Banjara votes can hold sway in districts such as Jalgaon, Hingoli, Latur, Yavatmal and, to a certain extent, Nashik.
Following the poor performance of the BJP in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha election last year, the party has been targeting micro-caste groups and campaigning among them to improve its chances for the assembly election——a strategy that worked for the party in the assembly polls last year.
Analysts say the Banjara outreach isalso going favourably.
'The community, as such, does not have a leader today, other than Sanjay Rathod of the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde), in mainstream politics. Rathod's image has also taken a hit due to several controversies. By inaugurating Vasantrao Naik's statue, the BJP is looking to fill that gap and reach out to the community,' political commentator Pratap Asbe said.
Rathod, as a leader of the undivided Shiv Sena, was formerly a part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) cabinet but had to resign as minister, following allegations about his links with the death by suicide of a 23-year-old woman. He later joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena when the party split and returned as minister in the Shinde-led Mahayuti government in 2022. In that stint too, he faced allegations of irregularities in allotment of land—meant for Other Backward Classes—to his trust.
Rathod is now a part of the Fadnavis-led Mahayuti 2.0 cabinet.
The statue
According to the Nanded Waghela municipal corporation, the project of ex-CM Naik's statue, initially conceived in 2008, had gone into cold storage.
Only in November 2021 did the project see a revival after a general body resolution to acquire 1,183.48 square feet of private land. At the time, the Maha Vikas Aghadi government of the undivided Shiv Sena, undivided NCP, and Congress ruled the state.
Built on 2,503.58 square feet, the statue required the civic body to acquire land from the Maharashtra State Warehousing Corporation. Nine feet tall, it cost Rs 13.99 lakh. Documents from the Nanded Waghela civic body show a separate land acquisition cost of Rs 60.68 lakh.
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